General thoughts & suggestions

So in this thread I'm going to discuss the base walls and artillery pieces.

The first one that I will discuss will be the base wall, when I was originally setting up my wall defences for my base I modelled it after the way the AI has them when you raid their bases. They have a small wall structure with at least two points of entry running parallel. However when first building my wall I also wanted to see how far I could expand my base and would it affect where the person attacking me could go.

This was then demonstrated when I was attacked not long ago by Ewan, my wall at that point was only one layer thick so if you had a ranged unit then you could easily target my forces. I also had one point of entry which I had littered with defences.

I didn't fight the battle personally, the AI used my units but the impression I got of how the battle played out, was that the enemy forces had gone up my left hand side, even though you can't build all the way it forces the enemy to form up into a column formation making them easy targets for any ranged units.

But when I took an artillery piece into a raid and realised that you could actually target buildings with this unit I began to attack the wall as a natural progression I attacked the wall, but after 3 turns it didn't feel like I was any closer to destroying the wall.

So this made me think about my base defences and the way the game is played and by that I mean you only have a certain amount of turns to either destroy the units or capture the harvester. So I thought why not close of my base entirely and thicken the layer and basically as a defence strategy play the battle of attrition where the player is forced to use up all his moves, granted my units will be able to target their units if they get too close but the harvester will be out of range, this is assuming that the AI doesn't want to suicide it when I'm not there.

Obviously the only weakness to this defence is if the player attacking having artillery or a chopper, although I haven't found out yet whether any other units can attack walls. Either unless someone has a chopper or artillery piece they wouldn't be effective in defeating my defences.

Whether you find this to be a huge issue for your players I don't know but here are a couple of suggestions you could implement. My first suggestion although not too sure how easy it would be to implement, but making it so that you can't completely close of a section of wall and there has to be a point of entry which you can fill but with a defence building such as the unit one.

Another suggestion, even though I have noticed that the cost of the wall has already been increased by 20 from 80 to 100, I think it could follow them same price increase as the other buildings. Obviously not as sharply but gradually after you have built a certain amount, it makes it more costly to construct elaborate wall defences.

The second item I wanted to discuss, which will be less drawn out than the wall defences is the artillery piece.

After using the artillery piece I haven't really come to a decision as to whether it is really cost effective, this isn't gospel but taken from my experience with the artillery unit.

So it takes 22k to research the unit, then costs 750 for the unit when its been researched which I feel is a comfortable amount for the unit because of the benefit in terms of range and damage it can inflict on some units. However I don't feel that the time in which it takes to recruit or repair the unit reflects the unit as it takes 2 hours.

Each time that I have used the artillery piece I have lost it and had to wait 2 hours each time to get it back. I understand that when designing units you have to do the whole give and take, strengths and weaknesses considerations. So the artilleries strengths are its long range and damage and the weakness is its mobility and health. I just don't feel that this well represented in the time it takes to recruit.

Also the damage it inflicts on buildings could probably be increased although this is probably dependent on the upgrades which I feel are a bit too costly to research considering the fact it takes a long time to replace the unit if it is destroyed which I feel may happen quite frequently, I've only ever managed to keep it alive once.

So in conclusion I feel there are some balancing issues for this unit that might need sorting out.

Great submission. This has been a really important report and we've been discussing all these issues in the studio for a while. Its interesting to look at your base and think about ways to get round it but we believe that as your currently number 1 ranked player and Ewan is the only one in your threshold its unlikely he is going to be able to raid your base as his army stands with his tactics. However, if another player comes along with a more adapted army with a strategy suited to your bases defense with for example tanks, or even a helicopter army as you said, we believe this would make the base and army an even match. Your defense strategy is great, but we did anticipate this being done as we where developing the game in its early stages. If you give it time to let others catch up to your with better armies I'm sure someone will be able to match your competition. Currently its because you are way too ahead of everyone and more powered. Its an interesting matter though.

This has helped us realise the importance of player balance matching and base boundaries, and its likely we will see an increase of price for walls in the future but the mechanics of it will be different to how the rest of the build work.

Great report though this has been extremely helpful. Do you have any other findings or suggestions?

Administrator

Good thoughts dice man we have made a few changes to discourage the uber fort. Walls now earn negative income for harvest and we have just decreased the speed up timer cost for artillery to 1 credit. I find them pretty powerful but usually target shorter ranged units like the tank or rockets. It is hard to win a game without a mixed force as every unit has a prey and a nemisis.